Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS)
Indiana Economic Development Corporation
Economic Strategy
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) is charged with growing the state economy, driving economic development, helping businesses launch, grow and locate in the state. They work together with state agencies, regional economic development organizations, industry leaders, and others throughout the state to advance economic development.
As a component to the American Rescue Plan Act the EDA provided $1M to each state to conduct statewide planning. The IEDC then hired Fourth Economy to complete the state’s first statewide Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS), a planning effort designed to utilize a regionally-owned planning process to build capacity and guide the economic prosperity and resiliency of the state. Completion of this work will not only provide a roadmap for regional and statewide economic development in the years to come, but also will enable the state to directly compete for future rounds of EDA funding. Indiana is one of only a few states in the nation pursuing a statewide CEDS, and provides an opportunity to set the precedent for statewide CEDS around the country.
Approach
Our team began this project with an extensive review of existing and concurrent plans and studies, such as previous regional CEDS and Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI) plans, and data analysis at both the statewide and regional levels. Engagement with a Strategy Committee comprised of statewide officials, industry leaders, and community decision makers, as well as broader engagement with regional leaders from around the state, topical experts in areas such as housing, workforce development, and small business growth, allowed our team to gain a breadth and depth of understanding of the strengths and challenges that the state and each individual region are facing today. Ongoing engagement to co-create and test solutions will continue through the duration of the project.
Ultimately, the goals of this project are: (1) determine how the state can leverage its unique assets to achieve economic development goals to support economic prosperity across the state, (2) create a set of statewide and regional strategies to accomplish this, complete with implementation plans and metrics for tracking success, (4) embed long term resilience into all strategies, and (5) build on existing efforts and ensure that there is stakeholder and community ownership of the strategies that are developed.
Location
Indiana